Unified Classical Thermodynamics: Primacy of Dissymmetry over Free Energy

Abstract

In thermodynamic theory, free energy (i.e., available energy) is the concept facilitating the combined applications of the theory’s two fundamental laws, the first and the second laws of thermodynamics. The critical step was taken by Kelvin, then by Helmholtz and Gibbs—that in natural processes, free energy dissipates spontaneously. With the formulation of the second law of entropy growth, this may be referred to as the dissymmetry proposition manifested in the spontaneous increase of system/environment entropy towards equilibrium. Because of Kelvin’s pre-entropy law formulation of free energy, our concept of free energy is still defined, within a framework on the premise of primacy of energy, as “body’s internal energy or enthalpy, subtracted by energy that is not available.” This primacy of energy is called into question because the driving force to cause a system’s change is the purview of the second law. This paper makes a case for an engineering thermodynamics framework, instead, to be based on the premise of the primacy of dissymmetry over free energy. With Gibbsian thermodynamics undergirded with dissymmetry proposition and engineering thermodynamics with a dissymmetry premise, the two branches of thermodynamics are unified to become classical thermodynamics.